


pentimento

by laughingwithsalads



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 18:48:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16247669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingwithsalads/pseuds/laughingwithsalads
Summary: “There’s a man,” Mal says. “You’ll like him.”





	pentimento

“There’s a man,” Mal says. “You’ll like him.”

“I doubt it,” Eames says.

“I think you’ll find you have a lot in common,” Mal says, ignoring him entirely.

“Expert in fine art conservation, is he, this bloke of yours?”

Mal raises one exquisitely pencilled eyebrow. “No need to be contrary, kitty. Shall I give you his number?”

“Suppose you better.”

She tears a strip from her little leather-bound cahier, hands it over, the number laid down there in her elegant scrawl. “Arthur, is his name.”

Eames doesn’t particularly care — about the man, about his name, about whatever scheme Mal’s attempting to enact.

She’s deigned to visit him and that’s enough. A chilly lunchtime picnic in the park. A snatched-out hour. She’ll be leaving again soon, and he wants to cling on as long as possible. Has to, now, when he hardly sees her, with her fancy new job and her fancy new boyfriend.

“Promise me you’ll call him?” Mal says.

“I’ll promise nothing of the sort.”

She doesn’t press, though Eames knows she wants to. Just kisses his cheek — once, twice, thrice — and leaves in the chauffeur-driven Jag that picks her up not five minutes later.

No Jag for Eames. He plays dodgems with the tourist throng around Horse Guards instead, makes his way back to the gallery, then upstairs and into the studied hush of the lab.

He deposits the slip of paper in his desk drawer, gets back to the foxing on his patiently waiting Old Master, and forgets about Mal’s man entirely.

  

#

 

“Right then. I’m off.” Yusuf.

Eames blinks up at him, then at the clock. Friday it might be, but it’s barely turned four. “Shouldn’t you still be doing naughty things to a spectrometer?”

“Got some black-tie do with Lilian tonight,” Yusuf says, shrugging into his cardigan. “She’ll eviscerate me if I’m late, and it’ll take me at least half an hour to figure out the dicky bow.”

That forces Eames into another blink. “How in god’s name did you afford a dinner suit?”

“Lilian bought it for me.”

“Oh, _did_ she now?”

“I’m a kept man,” Yusuf jokes, unabashed. “And bloody smashing it is too. I’d highly recommend it.”

Eames pauses for the required second, then, “Does Lilian have a brother by any chance?”

“Plumb out of luck, my friend,” Yusuf tells him, cheerfully, on his way to the door. He stops there, though, keys in hand, hand on the jamb. “Meant to ask — heard anything about the interview?”

Eames shakes his head. “Not until next week, apparently.”

“Wouldn’t worry,” Yusuf tells him. “You know they always promote in-house. You’re a shoo-in, mate.”

He better be. Has to be. There’s only so long he can get by spending the better part of his salary on rent.

There are other ways to bolster his income, of course. But, well — he that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind, and all that.

And Eames has troubled his own house just a little too much to avoid the gales forever.

So, “We’ll see,” he says.

 

#

 

The next time Eames blinks into awareness, he’s cross-eyed from the magnifying lenses, teary-eyed from the ammonia, and the clock’s telling him it’s gone half-past seven.

“Bugger.”

He contemplates curling up under his workbench for the night and hoping security won’t notice. Because if he doesn’t, there’s a never-ending train journey ahead of him. A half hour walk at the imagined end of that. Longer, if he misses the bus. Which he often does. Then it’s home to the joy of finding out whether the bathroom ceiling’s finally given up the ghost and caved in from the damp.

Christ. Going home — the one thing left to do is the one thing he least wants to.

But no helping it. He fetches his jacket, digs in the drawer for his keys and his phone, and it’s then that the little slip of paper catches his eye.

Eames picks it up, turns it over his knuckles a time or two, considering.

Chances are — knowing Mal — her mystery man is a City-type with a Zone 1 pied-à-terre. Eames could get himself a good, hard fuck, ignore any and all hints to leave until morning, then make the interminable journey back out to the sticks at his leisure.

Tempting, is what that is.

The screen on his phone’s cracked, has been for a while now, taken to extravagant flickering after a drunken altercation with a bollard, but it’s workable. Useable, still, at least…

“Oh, fuck it,” he mutters. Unlocks the thing and thumbs in a quick message.

_Charlie Eames here. Mal said to get in touch. Just wondering if you’re free and fancy a drink?_

He pockets his phone, double-checks his blocks and blotters, then goes to switch off the plethora of lights Yusuf has inevitably left burning. It’s only when he’s signing out at the security office that he thinks to check his phone again — and finds a reply. Nothing more than an address. But one in Mayfair, so the fates be kind.

He vaguely recognises it. Pub maybe? Or, no — there’s a nice Italian thereabouts. Not as encouraging as a townhouse or a penthouse or Christ, even just a flat number. But there are a few decent hotels nearby, and posh ones at that.

His luck might still hold.

 

#

 

Not a pub. Not a bistro.

A members’ club. The sort of place in which spitting distance requires a seven-figure bank book and the connections to match.

It’s also the sort of place where the dress code is not just a polite suggestion but utterly sacrosanct.

The door porter looks him up and down, and says not a single thing.

The blazer’s what it is, no helping that. His jeans are paint-splattered and varnish-stained, hazard of the job. But he’s quite proud of the shirt. Short-sleeved, faux silk, extracted from the bargain bin of his local Oxfam. Though the colour scheme, a mauve and cornflower blue pinstripe, might offer some hints as to why the shirt was consigned to the bargain bin in the first place.

“D’you know? Quite honestly,” Eames tells the porter, “I wouldn’t let me in either.”

Just turn around and head for home. Or back to his flat, at any rate. That’s what he needs to do. Should be doing.

But—

A sharp gust of wind, a mizzle of rain at its tail misting the warm, lit-up windows. And Eames’ phone is in his hand, no conscious thought to it, the number already dialling through.

“Yes?” The voice is nondescript. American, maybe. Nothing more than that. Hard to place.

“Eames here,” Eames says. “I’m at your club. Afraid I’ve run afoul of the dress code. Having a spot of bother getting in.”

Mal’s mystery man hangs up without so much as a by-your-leave. But before Eames can even attempt to summon up the energy for indignation, the door swings open on its shining brass hinges: the club steward, sharp in his suit, delivering an equally sharp look to the porter.

“I’m terribly sorry, Mr Eames. If you’ll follow me.”

The club is a quiet, austere sort of place. Dark wood and pale marble. Palatial lines, an atrium galleried and columned. Eames follows the steward across the airy expanse of it and into one of the saloons, over to where a man sits by the fire, reading the paper.

“Your guest, Mr Arthur.”

The tie’s a little more adventurous that he’d have pegged, and he’s much younger than Eames was expecting. But everything else — the severe, slicked-back hair, the perfectly tailored suit — it’s all in the wheelhouse.

Mr Arthur folds away his copy of the _FT_ and gestures to the seat across from him.

“Can I get you something to drink, sir?” the steward asks as Eames sits down.

Mr Arthur’s drinking coffee, by the looks of things. Espresso, even. Far too late in the evening for that sort of nonsense.

“G&T, please.”

It’s at his elbow a breath later. Small-batch gin and house-made tonic. He’ll be surprised if it sets him back less than twenty quid. But he’ll be equally surprised if he’s the one paying.

“Got your number from Mal,” Eames says, when it becomes clear from the studied, level gaze aimed his way that Mr Arthur isn’t going to be the one to open proceedings. “I suppose she might’ve mentioned me?”

“She didn’t,” Mr Arthur says. “At all.”

“Ah.” Fabulous start. “Well. Sorry about the—” Eames gestures to himself. “Came straight from work.” He’d have had the same clothes on regardless, but the blank-faced Mr Arthur doesn’t need to know that. “I’m a conservator,” Eames says. “At Penrose & Company. Over on Pall Mall, if you’ve heard of us?”

That results in a tip of the chin that is neither confirmation nor denial. Instead, “How is it that you know Mallorie Miles?”

“Went to uni together,” Eames says. “Been joined at the hip ever since.”

Or had been until the surgical separation began. It’s been a years’ long job thus far, more painful by the day.

“And you?” Eames asks. “How do you know Mal?”

“She’s a friend of a friend.”

Eames takes a long sip of his drink. Mr Arthur’s cup is already empty.

“If I were to make an educated guess,” Eames says, low, letting his mouth curve just a little, knowing exactly how it calls attention to his lips, wet, rouged from the ice, “I’d hazard we’re both here because Mal thought we might rub along quite well together.”

He lets his smirk grow just a touch more, makes plain the innuendo wasn’t unintentional, nor without intent.

Mr Arthur studies Eames for a moment, but no longer than that. “I have a room,” he says.

 

#

 

The room is a suite. The best in the building. The bedroom is elegant and understated, the bed large. Eames wanders over to it. Trails a finger across the smooth, cool cotton.

Mr Arthur doesn’t join him. He sits down in an armchair in the corner instead.

“Just going to watch, are you?” Eames asks, baffled, faintly amused.

“Tonight,” Mr Arthur says, “yes.”

Well, there’s a turn of phrase. One that suggests the mysterious Mr Arthur thinks there’s to be a repeat performance of whatever oddness is currently underway.

There won’t be.

Still, might as well give the bloke a show. It was a bloody good G&T after all.

So—

Blazer. Shirt. The shoes are loafers, easily toed off, the jeans have a button-fly, all the better for slow titillation. The underwear’s non-existent. Lucky, good for playing both part and tart, but no forethought. It’s simply that his washing machine’s become increasingly prone to demonic groaning and his landlord equally prone to ignoring his calls for an exorcism.

Eames lies back on the bed, stretches out, eases the tension from his tired muscles.

It’s well into autumn now, any summer tan a long-distant memory. But the sheets are crisp and white and the lighting’s muted. It’ll do him favours he doesn’t deserve.

He takes himself in hand, strokes, slow and teasing. He’s hard far quicker than he should be. Was already half-hard to begin with.

Mr Arthur watches him with eyes that are terribly dark and awfully intent. They don’t wander much either. Spend more time on his face than his cock.

So Eames lets his eyes drift closed. Touches himself with more purpose. Works himself over until he’s done.

He lies, spent, messy, hauling for breath, more strung out than some mildly kinky wank should warrant. “Well,” he says, eventually, “that was quite something.”

No reply except for a rustle of fabric: Mr Arthur standing, buttoning his suit jacket. “The room’s yours for the night,” he says, flat, not quite curt, and then he’s gone.

 

#

 

Eames phones room service. Orders a porterhouse with all the trimmings, a slice of treacle tart, a good few glasses of champagne.

He watches some silly, mindless action film on the ludicrous TV while he eats, and enjoys himself immensely. Enjoys, even more, the little bubble of luxury he’s toppled into, temporary though it may be.

And he’s sucking a spot of clotted cream from his thumb when it occurs to him that Yusuf, for the first and likely only time, is quite right: Eames would thoroughly enjoy being a kept man.

If only he could find someone to keep him.


End file.
